Background
Justin Abdilla is a Chicago-area real estate attorney who has worked on over 700 files across twelve years of practice. He started in 2013 with Joseph P. McCaffery and Associates, rising to the rank of senior associate within a year. His early career was built on foreclosure defense and short sale negotiations, work that gave him an unusually detailed understanding of how distressed properties move through Illinois courts.
In 2016, he made his first pivot, taking on construction law and contract injury cases. He negotiated two six-figure settlements in his first year handling them. By 2017, he had begun taking on transactions, and this set off what he calls the creative era for the firm. From 2017 to 2022, Justin became the attorney investors called when they had an unusual deal that needed to get done. He closed 300 files in 2020 alone, and 91 in 2021. During this period he also worked as an in-house title examiner for a regional title insurance company, which led him into creative finance and subject-to transactions and introduced him to some of the best practitioners in that space.
The evictions practice ramped up in 2023, growing out of the distressed property transactions. That year was small, about 80 filings, mostly as a service to existing clients. By 2024, it had become 150 filings annually with multiple attorneys handling trials every week. In mid-2025, the firm took on several multi-million dollar construction disputes and an eight-figure consulting engagement in a class action lawsuit. The practice has continued to grow from there into consultations for millions of dollars of subject-to transactions, hundreds of construction law cases, hundreds of evictions, and a few boutique engagements each year.
The cybersecurity work is not a hobby. It directly informs the firm’s identity protection practice, where Justin represents victims of identity theft and data breaches. His first vulnerability discovery involved gaining control of a machine’s RAM and is pending resolution, not yet published. His February 2026 paper on AI discoverability vulnerabilities, Discovering a Conversation with a Machine Friend, was accepted to SSRN for the Law and Cybersecurity Journal. He built the firm’s own secure client communication and workflow platforms, and has taken a number of cybersecurity, data protection, and automation engagements in the past year. Clients who work with Abdilla & Associates are probably transmitting their data through more secure infrastructure than they would at a firm ten times the size.
When he is not working, Justin plays Chess and Go, reads history, and cheers on his wife at her long-distance runs. They have two children together. Justin is a practicing Catholic and supports those who follow the example of St. Thérèse, in loving God, following Jesus, and serving all.
Education & Credentials
Education
Tax Certificate. President, Anti-Terror Law Student Organization.
Honors Program. Magna Cum Laude. Writing Club.
Bar Admission
Practice Areas
Real Estate Transactional Law
Residential and commercial closings across all of Chicagoland, not limited to one or two locations. Full support for remote notaries. From straightforward residential purchases to creative finance, subject-to transactions, and multi-unit acquisitions.
Eviction Law
Landlord-side evictions. 150+ annual filings across Cook, DuPage, Kane, and Lake counties. We litigate evictions. We are not looking to settle them, because we are not afraid of taking the case to the courtroom.
Construction Law
Mechanic’s lien foreclosures, vexatious denial litigation, secured transactions and finance, public adjusting litigation, subrogation. Retained counsel for one of the largest companies in the state handling these disputes.
Zoning
Special use permits, variances, rezoning for additional units. We maintain a dossier on every inspector and their recent publicly available decisions so we can anticipate what will be an issue in your unique circumstance.
Identity Protection
Legal representation for identity theft victims and data breach response, backed by hands-on cybersecurity research. SSRN-published on AI discoverability vulnerabilities. Built our own secure infrastructure from the ground up.
Selected Notable Work
- Performed commercial due diligence on a $78,000,000 transaction on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile
- Authored the Standard Operating Procedures for underwriting subject-to transactions for Illinois title insurance
- Successfully prosecuted an injunction prohibiting an alleged tortfeasor from interfering with 35,000 businesses
- Underwrote a business-to-business loan from a publicly traded company for $4,000,000 of security
- Prevailed on appeal in Bank of America v. Russell, changing the Illinois Mortgage Foreclosure Law’s application in 735 ILCS 2/1302
- Transacted a 21-unit building on 14 days’ notice with clean title
- Wrote a Rule 504 Accredited Investor Offering for $20,000,000 to a local religious association
- Successfully litigated two separate title insurance claims resulting in full payment of the purchase price to the investor when the transaction from the seller was fraudulent
- Successfully litigated a release of $50,000 of municipal liabilities for permits through rezoning
Publications & Media
Courts & Jurisdictions
Justin regularly appears in the following courts:
Cook County
Collar Counties
Client Reviews
90 reviews across Google and Avvo. Read all Google reviews →