Of course calls for information interviews are not illegal. Information interviews are an important part of a successful person's job hunt or any target market research.

You will find far more people will be open to this than you think now. Some just want to be helpful. Others want to show off how much they know. Either way, they'll be gratified you called.

Here's a blog post I wrote about information interviews:
http://www.salestactics.org/information-interviews/

If someone says No, they're just too busy or they don't have the kind of personality you'd want to be around anyway. But far more people will say Yes. This is all about them--not you. Remember that.