Courtney Walker serves as Of Counsel to DZ Law, PLLC, with a focus on corporate law, medical aesthetics, and business transactions. She advises business owners at the intersection of corporate structure, deals, regulation, and day-to-day operations—helping aesthetics businesses and ambitious founders grow with stronger legal and operational foundations.

Courtney’s value is not limited to document drafting. She has worked as outside transactional counsel and as an internal chief legal officer inside a multi-location aesthetics business. That combination helps her view legal questions in the context of growth, staffing, financing, implementation, risk, and the realities of operating a regulated business. Her counsel is legal, transactional, corporate, and regulatory—not clinical or medical advice.

She is especially relevant to med spa founders, aesthetic practice owners, nurse practitioners and other licensed providers, physicians involved in aesthetic businesses, multi-location platforms, investors and buyers, and founders planning an acquisition, sale, financing, or expansion.

Counsel for Aesthetics Businesses and Growth-Stage Companies

Courtney’s practice is industry-specific rather than generalist. She helps clients with:

• Medical aesthetics and med spa counsel – corporate structure, ownership and control, provider relationships, management arrangements, regulatory risk, and expansion planning.
• Business formation and governance – entity formation, founder arrangements, operating agreements, governance, and ownership transitions.
• Mergers, acquisitions, and business sales – buy-side and sell-side planning, diligence, transaction structure, and post-closing considerations.
• Commercial and venture financing – lending transactions, growth capital, and financing issues that affect implementation after closing.
• Regulatory and operational strategy – compliance frameworks, insurance-risk review, policies and procedures, and legal-operational alignment without promising guaranteed regulatory outcomes.

Key Practice Areas

Business Transactions & Contracts

Early structural decisions affect control, liability, financing readiness, and exit options. Courtney advises on entity formation, founder arrangements, operating agreements, commercial contracts, and ownership transitions that can actually be implemented inside a growing aesthetics or commercial business.

Business & Commercial Litigation

Growth-stage and aesthetics businesses still face commercial conflict. Courtney’s corporate and operational perspective helps clients evaluate disputes and transactions with an eye toward how the business must continue to function.

Appeals & Federal Court Litigation

When a corporate or commercial matter raises appellate or federal-court issues, DZ Law’s appeals practice provides disciplined briefing and strategy. Courtney’s transactional work is coordinated with the firm’s litigation capabilities when needed.

Counsel Informed by Building and Advising Businesses

Courtney’s strongest differentiator is that she has worked on both sides of the attorney-client relationship: as outside transactional counsel, as an internal chief legal officer, as a co-founder and operator of a multi-location aesthetics company, and as an adviser focused on the regulatory realities of medical aesthetics.

Previously, she served as co-founder and Chief Legal Officer of Smiley Aesthetics, where she helped build and scale a multi-location aesthetics business. A 2024 American Med Spa Association feature discussed her role with Smiley Aesthetics and her involvement in the Tennessee State Chapter. She has also publicly advised aesthetics businesses through Court Approved counsel.

Before that operating role, Courtney practiced at Gentry, Tipton & McLemore. Her prior transactional work has included commercial financing, venture financing, federal and state taxation issues, real-estate development, entity formation, and mergers and acquisitions. That background shapes how she advises founders: legal documents are only useful if ownership, provider relationships, financing, and compliance can work in practice.

Why Clients Work With Courtney

• Industry-specific counsel – Medical aesthetics and private-pay medicine raise ownership, provider, and regulatory questions general corporate advice often misses.
• Operator-informed judgment – Experience as a chief legal officer and co-founder helps her connect legal structure to staffing, growth, and implementation.
• Transaction readiness – She helps clients prepare for financing, acquisition, sale, or expansion with diligence and structure in mind.
• Regulatory awareness without hype – She focuses on practical compliance frameworks and risk review, not slogans about disruption or guaranteed outcomes.

How Courtney Works With Clients

Courtney starts with the business model: who owns what, who provides care, how the company grows, and what risk the founders are actually carrying. From there, she aligns corporate documents, transactions, and operational policies with the way the business runs. The goal is counsel that can be implemented—not paperwork that looks complete on day one and fails under real operations.

Education

• Juris Doctor — Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School of Law (valedictorian; distinction in Advanced Government Relations, as reported by DZ Law)
• Undergraduate degree, Agribusiness Management — Tennessee Technological University

Background

Early in her professional development, Courtney worked in the office of Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam. She later practiced transactional law at Gentry, Tipton & McLemore before co-founding and serving as Chief Legal Officer of Smiley Aesthetics. She is licensed to practice law in Tennessee and has been licensed since 2018.

Recognition

• Selected to Mid-South Rising Stars by Super Lawyers in Mergers & Acquisitions, 2023
• Cityview Top Attorney recognition, 2022 and 2023

Recognition by Super Lawyers, Cityview, or other third-party organizations is not a guarantee of future results and does not indicate a comparison of attorney quality.

Personal Note

Away from client work, Courtney is a Rubik’s Cube speed-solving hobbyist—a detail that reflects the same patience and pattern recognition she brings to structured legal and operational problems. DZ Law also notes that she was the youngest member of her law-school class.

More of the DZ Law Team

Robert Dziewulski · Ashleigh Beer-Vineyard

Contact DZ Law, PLLC

If you are building, buying, selling, financing, or expanding a medical-aesthetics or growth-stage business and need corporate, transactional, or regulatory counsel, call (865) 259-0020 or use the form below to request a consultation.