Artificial intelligence and information networks are the toolbox of contemporary legal practice, but not for all. Fettered in paper prisons, pro se inmates are without counsel, computers or connectivity. How many never get their day in court, not even technology can tell us. So it is that equal access to informational justice ends with the right to counsel.

Someday, the term “lawyer,” like “computer,” will graduate in meaning from exclusive human activity to pure automation. For now, technology is recruited to do the work of attorneys, not replace them. See Philip Segal, “Legal Jobs in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” SSRN (2017).

Pattern matching programs could open doors to exoneration. See Debra Cassens Weiss, “ABA Project Will Use E-Discovery Software to Identify Wrongful Conviction Trends,” ABA J., Oct. 24, 2017 (DFNDER Project). And computer applications might be refashioned to assist post-conviction filers. See Margaret Smilowitz, “What Happens After the Right to Counsel Ends?,” 107 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 493 (2017). But without lawyers, the machinery of justice sits idle.