Dallas attorney Mike McKool believes in working and playing hard. When he’s not duking it out in the courtroom or preparing for trial, he’s likely indulging his passion for cross-country motorcycle racing.

Speeding across rough terrain is both physically grueling and strangely relaxing, McKool said. “When you’re doing a physical activity that requires 100 percent of your attention, it’s stress-relieving,” he said.

The attorney sees parallels between racing motorcycles and being a trial lawyer.

“Your competitive juices flow in both places,” he said, “and preparation is a big part of both of them.”

That preparation appears to be paying off. A string of high-dollar verdicts — against big defendants such as Microsoft Corp. and the National Football League — is fueling growth for his firm, McKool Smith PC. So much so, the company is mulling its real estate options more than four years before its lease runs out at the Crescent.

McKool said the firm likes its Uptown Dallas digs, but is looking at developing a building of its own or being the lead tenant in a to-be-built structure. It currently leases about 100,000 square feet in the Crescent, where it’s the largest tenant. The lease expires in late 2014.

McKool says the firm will stay in Dallas, and has its eye on the Arts District or the Victory area if it does move.

McKool Smith will likely be in the market for 120,000 to 150,000 square feet of office space, depending on an analysis that’s now under way, said the firm’s broker, John Amend, president of The Amend Group. Among the buildings McKool Smith will consider are two towers in the Arts District being planned by developers Craig Hall and Lucy Billingsley, Amend said.

The broker said McKool Smith has to start its search more than four years before its lease expires in the Crescent because it takes that long to sort through the options and decide whether a new building is the best choice. If the firm decides to go into a new building, it will take more than two years to finance and construct it, Amend said.

McKool and Phil Smith founded the firm that bears their names in 1991 with 11 lawyers in Dallas. Today, it has more than 125 lawyers nationwide, with offices in Dallas, Austin, Houston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Marshall, where the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas is known for quickly resolving high-stakes commercial disputes.

Forty of the firm’s lawyers were added in the last two years, McKool said, and about 70 are based in Dallas.

The firm, which is best known for its patent litigation work, won four Top 100 courtroom verdicts in 2008 and another four in 2009 — more than any other firm in the country, according to research compiled by VerdictSearch, which tracks U.S. verdicts.

“We’re the only firm in history that has won the most Top 100 verdicts for two years in succession,” McKool said. “It’s never been done before.”

The 2008 verdicts ranged from $21 million to $250 million and added up to $358 million. The 2009 verdicts ranged from $19 million to $290 million and totaled $467 million.

Two recent big-ticket wins ­— the $290 million verdict last year and a $106 million verdict in March — were patent infringement cases against Redmond, Wash.-based software giant Microsoft Corp.

‘Aura of perfectionism’

McKool wants to diversify into pharmaceutical litigation; he sees promise as battles between generics and name-brand medicines escalate. He also sees white-collar crime and bankruptcy as areas in which the firm will expand.

The firm plans to add an office in Northern California because demand for its patent litigation services is increasing in the research-and-development hotbeds of Silicon Valley and San Francisco. McKool would like to add a 25-lawyer office there through a merger or by hiring top attorneys from other San Francisco-area firms, he said.

McKool said the firm focuses on hiring the best lawyers, setting high standards and keeping an intense focus on teamwork.

“We have a real aura of perfectionism,” he said. “It’s a firm where good enough is just not good enough.”