Client: The Law Office of DL Brown
Industry: Real Estate Law (Solo Practice)
Location: Illinois, United States
Product Type: AI document filler + Flat-to-fillable PDF conversion
Use Case: Converting flat PDF court and transaction forms to fillable, then filling them with AI
Start Date: July 2025
Many court and transaction forms used in Cook County residential real estate are distributed as flat PDFs – static files that can’t be filled digitally. For a solo attorney handling closings, evictions, and leases across multiple courthouses, this means retyping client data into every document by hand.
This case study covers how The Law Office of DL Brown uses Instafill.ai to convert flat PDFs to fillable forms and fill them with AI, eliminating the manual bottleneck across his entire form library.
About The Practice
Donteé L. Brown is the sole attorney at The Law Office of DL Brown in Tinley Park, IL. His practice focuses exclusively on residential real estate – buying, selling, leasing, and evicting across Cook County. As a solo practitioner, Donteé handles all legal and administrative work himself, including the form preparation that drives most of his daily output.
The Challenge: Flat PDFs Across Every Part of the Practice
Illinois residential real estate practice runs on standardized forms. Every closing requires a closing statement. Every eviction requires complaints, summons, affidavits, and orders. Every lease requires a county-specific agreement. Every limited scope court appearance requires a standardized filing.
The problem: many of these forms are distributed as flat PDFs – static files with no interactive fields. The Illinois Courts website warns that even forms filled and saved digitally will become “flattened” and lose their fillable properties. This is not a bug – it’s how the system works.
For Donteé’s practice, this creates three specific pain points:
- The closing statement – the single most frequently completed document in his practice – contains dozens of financial fields: purchase price, tax prorations, revenue stamps (state, county, municipal), title insurance, commission splits, mortgage payoffs, recording fees, and cash‑to‑balance calculations. Each transaction needs a new one.
- Courthouse‑specific forms from the Markham and Harvey courthouses are only available as flat PDFs obtained in person from the clerk’s office – they do not exist as fillable downloads anywhere online.
- Volume compounds the problem. Every new closing, eviction, or lease filing means pulling up the same flat form and manually retyping all client and property data from scratch.
The Solution: 3 Steps – Upload, Convert, Fill
Donteé’s workflow with Instafill.ai follows three steps:
Step 1: Upload the Flat PDF
Donteé uploads the static, non-fillable PDF to AI PDF and Word document filler. This can be a form downloaded from illinoiscourts.gov, a closing statement template, a Cook County lease, a courthouse-specific form picked up at the Markham or Harvey clerk’s office, etc.
Step 2: Instafill.ai Converts to Fillable
The platform detects the form’s structure and creates an interactive, fillable version with properly mapped fields. This converted template is saved permanently in Donteé’s account – the conversion only needs to happen once per form type.
Step 3: Fill Out with AI
For each new transaction, Donteé provides client and property data. Instafill.ai populates the converted template with the correct information – names, addresses, financial figures, dates, legal descriptions, etc. Donteé then reviews and downloads the filled PDF, and brings it to the closing table or files it with the court.
This three‑step process is what makes the process so efficient at scale. The templates were converted once. Every subsequent filling uses the same fillable templates, filled with new transaction data.
The Forms
Donteé’s practice uses Instafill.ai across the full range of documents a Cook County real estate attorney handles:
| Category | Forms |
|---|---|
| Closings | Closing Statement |
| Evictions | Eviction Order, Posting Affidavit, Notice for Posting |
| Leases | Cook County Residential Lease, Draft Residential Lease, RM Lease Packet |
| Court Appearances | Limited Scope Appearance |
| Estate / Transfer | TODI Notice of Acceptance |
| Contracts | Revised General Real Estate Contract, Buyer Information Request Form |
| Courthouse-Specific | Markham Update Form, Harvey 2025 Form, Motion Call Order |
| State Filings | Illinois Secretary of State Forms |
Example form:
Features Used
| Feature |
|---|
| Flat-to-fillable conversion |
| Form fine-tuning |
| Reusable form templates |
Why Flat-to-Fillable Changes the Workflow
Most form-filling tools assume you start with a fillable PDF. That assumption breaks down in Cook County real estate practice for three reasons:
Court forms become flat after saving.
The Illinois Courts system warns users that forms filled and saved from their website lose interactive field properties and become flattened. An attorney who downloads and saves an eviction order or limited‑scope appearance form from illinoiscourts.gov ends up with a flat file that cannot be filled again without retyping.
Courthouse‑specific forms were never fillable.
The Markham courthouse and Harvey courthouse serve Cook County’s 6th Municipal District. The location‑specific forms used at these courthouses, like the Markham Update Form and Harvey 2025 Form, are distributed as static PDFs from the clerk’s office. There is no fillable version available online or anywhere else.
The conversion step is what makes automation possible.
Without converting flat PDFs to fillable templates first, there is nothing for an AI to fill. This is the prerequisite step that unlocks the entire workflow, and it only needs to happen once per form type. Every subsequent fill reuses the same converted template.
Results at a Glance
- 15+ flat PDF form types converted to permanent fillable templates
- 8+ months of continuous, expanding usage
- Closing statements filled repeatedly – the highest-frequency form, sometimes multiple per day
- Courthouse-specific forms that have no online fillable versions have been made permanently fillable and reusable
- Custom fine-tuning applied to complex forms for improved accuracy
- Forms span different categories: closings, evictions, leases, court appearances, estate transfers, contracts, courthouse-specific filings, and state forms
How This Workflow Applies to Similar Firms
Flat PDF conversion is the entry point.
Unlike practices that work with natively fillable government forms (such as many USCIS immigration forms), this practice’s forms were largely not fillable to begin with. Municipal governments in Cook County’s south suburbs, the Cook County Clerk’s office, and even some Illinois Supreme Court forms distribute PDFs as flat files. Converting them to fillable templates is the first step before any automation is possible.
Closing statements are the highest‑frequency use case.
The closing statement is the single most repeated document in a real estate law practice. Every residential transaction ends with one. It contains dozens of fields — debits, credits, prorations, taxes, and fees — that change per deal. The high volume of closing statement fills across eight months confirms it as the natural starting point for form automation in this vertical.
Municipal fragmentation creates a library problem.
A firm covering multiple south suburban municipalities needs to maintain separate forms for each — Markham has its own, Harvey has its own, and so on. Each form has a different layout and field structure. A centralized form library where each template is converted and fine‑tuned once, then reused per transaction, addresses this directly.
Annual court form updates require ongoing maintenance.
Illinois Supreme Court‑mandated forms are updated periodically. The activity history includes both 2025 and 2026 versions of posting affidavits and notices for posting. A form automation workflow needs to accommodate this: upload the new version, fine‑tune once, and continue filling without disrupting day‑to‑day work.
Ready to Automate Your Legal Forms?
Whether your firm uses court forms, county forms, or custom templates, Instafill.ai helps legal professionals convert flat PDFs to fillable documents and fill them with AI.