The tip literally came from the professor who assigned the legal writing projects, so I didn't really feel like I was cheating. The reason she gave the tip was because she was a practicing attorney who claimed to regularly consult law librarians for help researching a case.
Learning is so much more efficient and effective when helpful experts are available to consult. When students are taught 1:1 by expert tutors their typical performance is literally 2 standard deviations better than students taught in a class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
Ideally, if we could afford it, this would be how everything is learned; students would progress several times faster than they currently do.
This is one of the reasons that computer programming is such a joy to learn about. Have something you’re stuck on? Go ask on IRC (or stack overflow or a mailing list or whatever) and get an answer from an expert right away, instead of hunting around blindly for a few days.
When we build communities of people who all “cheat” together by helping each-other learn things fast, critiquing each-others’ work, riffing on each-others’ ideas, etc., everyone gets to the cutting edge much faster, and the whole field marches forward.