Doctrine (also known as Doctrine.fr) is a French startup created in 2016. Doctrine uses artificial intelligence to centralise legal information and make it accessible to legal professionals via a legal search engine on case law and legislation.
Doctrine was created in June 2016 by Nicolas Bustamante, Antoine Dusséaux, and River Champeimont.
In 2020, Doctrine launched the "Document Analyzer" feature, which detects and enriches legal sources in documents.
In April 2023, the company announced that it would be acquired by the investment funds Summit Partners and Peugeot Invest for more than â¬100 million.
In December 2023, Doctrine announced its acquisition of Jobexit, marking the company's first acquisition.
In 2024, Doctrine expanded into Italy. That same year, it received coaching from the CNIL on GDPR and signed a partnership agreement with the Paris Bar.
In 2025, Doctrine entered the German market with a minority investment in legal information provider Dejure and in 2026, Doctrine expanded to Spain by acquiring Spanish legal information provider Maite.
The search engine relies on algorithms and artificial intelligence and is commercialised on a subscription-based model.
In 2018, Doctrine was sued by its competitors LexisNexis, Dalloz, Wolters Kulwer France, Lexbase and Lextenso for unfair competition. In February 2023, the Tribunal de commerce de Paris ruled in favour of Doctrine on the merits, rejecting the publishers' claims and ordering them to pay â¬50,000 in damages for abusive proceedings (the legal publishers have appealed, and the proceedings are ongoing). Typosquatting charges were brought against Doctrine in 2018 and dismissed in 2022. In 2022, Doctrine sued France before the European Court of Human Rights to gain access to the Tribunal de Paris' decisions.