Sarah Louppe Petcher
Founding Partner, Champion of Real Estate, Master of the World (wait, is that too much???)
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Born and raised in Paris, France, Sarah worked as a family law attorney in Fairfax before becoming General Counsel of the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors (NVAR), where she fell in love with real estate.
During her tenure at NVAR, she learned not only about running a real estate association but also came to understand the full picture of the real estate industry in the US. With this unique perspective, she partnered with Toula Dreifuss to form S&T Law Group and the 1031 Exchange Group, providing legal services to Realtor associations, real estate brokerages, real estate agents, and members of the public involved in real estate transactions.
Sarah holds a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts from Northwestern University and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. In 2025, she received the Traver Scholar Award from the Real Property Section of the Virginia State Bar and Virginia CLE®, which honors men and women who embody the highest ideals and expertise in real estate law.
In 2007, she received the R. Edwin Burnette Jr. Young Lawyer of the Year Award for her dedicated service to the Young Lawyers Section, the legal profession at large, and the community.
Sarah lives in Falls Church, VA, with her husband and two daughters. She enjoys cooking and theatre, and tries to return home to France as often as she can.
Toula Dreifuss
Founding Partner, Trust and Estate Planner, Drafter of Deeds, Editor of Emails, “The Nice One!”
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Toula has real estate in her blood (literally). She grew up in a family where her mother was a real estate agent and had been helping her for as long as she could remember. When she went to law school, she knew she would end up back in the real estate field. And she did! Toula rocked the settlement world for a number of years (we won’t mention how many because you would not believe it anyway!) and along the way learned firsthand about the stress caused by inadequate estate planning. That experience led her to build a practice centered on helping individuals and families put a solid plan in place.
Today, estate planning is at the heart of Toula’s practice, complemented by deed and title work and transactional real estate support for buyers, sellers, and private lenders.
On a personal note, Toula lives in Fairfax County with her husband and four sons (yep, four), along with several family pets. In her spare time… just joking. What spare time? Four sons, remember?… and so she loves and embraces the current level of “busy” and knows she will miss it someday!
Vika Mitchell
Director of Operations, Magical Wizard, Keeper of Time and Space
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After a handful of years in the hospitality industry, Vika decided that working late hours, nights and weekends was for the birds. She then spent 2 years honing her “admin wizard” skills at a small construction and remodeling company in Maryland. One fateful day she was offered an interview for a position at the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors by a friend, and the rest as they say, is history. She started in the membership department at NVAR, and quickly rose to first a Manager, and then an Associate Director of Events, a role in it’s various iterations, that she held for 13 years. During this time she fell in love with the world of real estate, the agents who sell it, and the industry that promotes the American Dream of homeownership. She made many connections, notably meeting and working alongside Sarah Louppe Petcher, who at the time, was General Counsel at NVAR. In 2020, a couple of years after Sarah and Toula started S&T Law Group, the stars aligned and Vika made the move to our firm.
Vika manages all of the “non-law” aspects of law firm’s operations, from scheduling, to billing, to database management, and anything in between.
Vika was born and raised in the suburb of Moscow, Russia and came to the US as an exchange student in California first and later attended college in Maryland. She now lives in Poolesville, MD with her 3 teen kids, 2 cats, and one neurotic dog.
Brenda Hansen
Senior Paralegal Extraordinaire – the stuff legends are made of
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Brenda began her career in the title industry in 1989 (what she jokingly refers to as eons ago) as an abstractor for a law firm in North Carolina. Her introduction to title research came when an attorney handed her a law book to study over a weekend and then took her to the Land Records office, where she shadowed him through a 60-year title search. From that moment, she was fascinated by the world of title research. She especially enjoyed uncovering the history of the land.
In 1992, she relocated to Northern Virginia and joined Stewart Title’s abstracting department. She later moved to a settlement company, where she conducted title searches at courthouses along the I-95 corridor and throughout the westernmost counties of Northern Virginia. During this period, one employer recognized that individuals with abstracting experience were particularly well-suited to drafting title commitments. As a result, she was brought in-house and trained to prepare commitments.
In 1996, she obtained her Virginia and Maryland Title Insurance Licenses and went on to work for several settlement companies and law firms as a Title Agent and processor. Throughout her career, she has issued commitments and policies for First American, Chicago Title, and Stewart Title.
In 2016, she broadened her professional experience by transitioning to the lending side of the industry, accepting a position as Senior Closer for Caliber Home Loans’ Wholesale Branch in Fairfax, Virginia. Anticipating changes in the market, she moved to a law firm before the loan industry downturn in 2018. This role introduced her to estate planning, where she leveraged her extensive title expertise to draft deeds, assist attorneys in locating land records documents across the country, attend signings, and file and record legal documents.
In 2021, she joined S&T Law Group, where she manages a growing volume of deed requests and assists with entity licensing renewals in numerous jurisdictions. She genuinely loves the industry and remains passionate about the work she does.
Outside of her professional life, she enjoys walking her dogs, attending outdoor music concerts with friends, tending to her vegetable and flower gardens, and spending time on her daughter’s 30-acre hobby farm. There, she happily spoils and grooms four horses, cares for a donkey, feeds a flock of twelve chickens, and helps manage numerous sheep and goats. One of her favorite farm adventures is trying to move a herd of sheep that would much rather continue grazing on the lawn than return to their pen.