As I reflect on the Christmas season, I find myself thinking about George Bailey. My wife has made it a tradition to watch It’s a Wonderful Life every Christmas morning while the kids channel their inner barbarians and tear into their presents. It’s chaos, joy, and nostalgia all wrapped into one, and somehow that movie always lands a little differently each year.

I’m sure countless people have offered thoughtful reviews of George Bailey and the film over the decades. At some point I even joked to myself, “The world is clearly waiting for Colt McKelvey’s take.” I’m kidding, mostly, but here it is anyway.

The conclusion I keep coming back to is simple: George Bailey never stood alone because he never lived that way. His community showed up for him because he had always shown up for them.

When I decided to start my own law practice, I had zero clients, almost no money in the bank, a beautiful and supportive wife, one daughter, and another on the way. My office was a single room above a real estate agency that graciously let me use the space for a few hundred dollars a month. I remember sitting there more than once wondering whether I had made a terrible mistake.

The questions were relentless and familiar to anyone responsible for a family: How am I going to feed my kids? How will we afford a reliable car? Does this crushing stress ever ease, or is this just life now?

And then something happened, something that, at the time, felt almost divine.

The phone started to ring.

People began calling and asking if I would look at their case. They weren’t offering much money, but they were offering trust. These weren’t friends of mine, and they certainly didn’t know me as some exceptional attorney. I wasn’t Matlock or Harvey Specter, still probably aren’t. These calls came from friends of my parents, Bill and Jeanne McKelvey. From people and institutions rooted in Cambria County, Johnstown, and the surrounding communities.

My father was the kind of man who, sometimes to a fault, would lend money to just about anyone or help them find it for whatever project they were chasing. Employees, lifelong friends, the local jeweler, and anyone else who came knocking. My mother taught generations of students at the local Vo-Tech and spent nearly her entire life in Johnstown. To this day, former students from twenty-plus years ago still walk into my office and say, “I remember your mom, Jeanne.”

I could list their accomplishments and character traits at length, but that’s not the point. The point is that they lived engaged lives. They invested in people. They showed up for their community long before there was any benefit to be gained from it.

And when their son took a risk and started from nothing, that same community showed up, not because of anything I had done, but because of what my parents had done long before me. People didn’t see a young lawyer trying to make a buck. They saw a chance to return a favor. To help build something in the same way they themselves had once been helped.

The principle is simple: community engagement matters.

What I am about to say may draw some criticism, but it needs to be said plainly. We should be far more intentional about who we choose to do business with. When we consistently bypass local professionals in favor of distant, volume-driven institutions, we reinforce a system that values efficiency over relationship and extraction over responsibility.

Stated bluntly, and unapologetically, when we abandon our community businesses, we allow the Potters of the world to win. And Potter does not return loyalty, grace, or care. He returns leverage.

Of course, there are exceptions. This is not an argument for blind localism or rigid rules. It is an argument for awareness. Every choice we make strengthens a model. The question is whether that model is rooted in community or detached from it.

Estate planning, in particular, should be done by someone who is part of your community, someone whose reputation is shaped by the same people you see at church, at school events, and at the grocery store. It should be an attorney with whom you can develop a real relationship. It does not need to be deep or personal, but it must be genuine.

Because estate planning is not just about documents. It is about judgment, accountability, and trust, and, those are built most reliably face to face, over time, within a shared community.
You will leave this earth for a heavenly kingdom. Your family will remain. When they are grieving and vulnerable, it will not be an institution that helps them, it will be a person, in their community, carrying out the plan you entrusted to them.

I want people to walk into my office in Canonsburg, and into Tonilyn’s office in Johnstown, and trust us with their legal work, but only if we have earned that trust through real involvement in the communities we serve.

That trust is never automatic. It must be built the same way it always has been: by showing up, by giving back, and by putting people ahead of profit. My parents understood that. George Bailey understood that. They invested in their communities long before there was anything to gain from doing so, and when the time came, the community responded in kind.

This is the model we strive for. Not extraction, but stewardship. Not scale, but service. Not the Potters of the world, who profit from distance and detachment, but the quiet faithfulness of people who live among those they serve.

So don’t settle for a Potter. Look for a George Bailey. Look for people like Bill and Jeanne McKelvey. And if we are doing our jobs well, if we are present, accountable, and committed, then, hopefully, you will find that same spirit in the work Tonilyn and I do every day.