The Law School Admissions Test (LSAT)—the appropriately named test you take to be admitted into law school—is a three-and-a-half hour examination. In it, time is divided evenly between five multiple-choice sections covering critical reasoning, logic, and reading comprehension, plus one writing sample. Each multiple-choice section has around 25 questions, and each has five possible answers. The test is graded on a curve; a perfect score is a 180, and the lowest is 120. The writing sample is not graded.

"Do you have to memorize the Constitution or something?" I asked him. (I don't know any lawyers.) "No," he told me. The LSAT simply tests logic and reasoning skills, not factual knowledge. I've always considered myself a pretty reasonable guy, so why couldn't I just take the test cold? Why waste months of my life studying if all the test does is gauge my ability to think? (This is the sort of question someone who excels at logic would ask, I thought.) He laughed and said I would do terribly. Besides, the test costs $180, so it would be a waste of money.

Like most people, despite knowing better, I have always suspected that maybe somewhere out there is an activity at which I could be a genius. I've watched enough biopics to feel I possess some of the eccentricities—issues with shirt tags and sock seams and eye contact, repetitive food habits—that are the mark of singular achievers. But I am getting older, and lately have been aware I'm running out of time to be a wunderkind. I had been searching for my special talent when, at a dinner party, I found out one of the smartest people I know, newly unemployed, planned to spend four months studying for the LSAT like it was a full-time job.

I knew almost none of this information when I sat down to take the LSAT early one Saturday morning in September, because I had decided to take it without studying or researching the test at all.

For people of a certain milieu, law is the ever-present backup career for a less-exciting but more-stable future. It's not a life I've ever particularly wanted, but what if I could have it extremely easily? I might just take it. So I signed up to take the LSAT at Brooklyn's Medgar Evers College.

After you register, it quickly becomes clear that everything about the LSAT provokes bureaucratic dread, which makes sense given its source. Space is limited, so sign-up occurs months ahead of the actual test date. In the interim, you receive dozens of sternly worded email reminders: You must upload a clear picture of yourself, which must be different than the one on your accepted form of ID and match how you'll look on the day of the test. You may bring a sealed one-gallon Ziploc bag to the test with "ONLY the following items: valid ID, wallet, keys, feminine hygiene/medical products, No. 2 or HB wooden pencils, a highlighter, erasers, pencil sharpener, tissues, beverage in a plastic container or juice box." Absolutely no cellphones and so forth. Over time I became less nervous I would fail than that I simply wouldn't be allowed to take the test due to some improperly filled-out form.