How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

For me, building strong relationships with business partners might be the greatest challenge for any in-house lawyer. While you need to create strong partnerships with business units, you also want to maintain just enough distance to avoid any conflict or appearance of conflict of interest. There is no magic formula, but with time you learn how to separate the two. From my experience, transparency is a key component to that formula, always letting business know that you work for the company’s legal department, which should not stop you from creating valuable relationships with them.