Being kicked

Why is it that people are impressed when you say you're a law student...but when somebody says they're a lawyer, they get the evil eye?

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I dig this quote from my Contracts casebook:

“As Holmes once observed, even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over.”

I wish I could elucidate the context, but my brain was too tired to wrap around it. It was in the defenses section, regarding rescission of a contract for legal impossibility versus legal impractibility.