Okay, so shortly after I put a bounty up, I came up with the following solution. It is the default behaviour in every way, except that it selects excerpt view for whatever post type you want (instead of the default list view).

<?php add_action( 'admin_init', 'my_admin_init' ); // initiate admin hook function my_admin_init() { // if mode is not set redirect to a default mode. if(!isset($_GET['mode'])) { if($_GET['post_type'] == 'forms' || $_GET['post_type'] == 'client-quotes') { header('Location: '.admin_url('edit.php?mode=excerpt&post_type='.$_GET['post_type'])); exit; } } } ?> 

Okay, so shortly after I put a bounty up, I came up with the following solution. It is the default behaviour in every way, except that it selects excerpt view for whatever post type you want (instead of the default list view).

<?php add_action( 'admin_init', 'my_admin_init' ); // initiate admin hook   function my_admin_init() { // if mode is not set redirect to a default mode. if(!isset($_GET['mode'])) { if('forms' == $_GET['post_type'] || 'client-quotes' == $_GET['post_type'] ) { wp_redirect( admin_url( 'edit.php?mode=excerpt&' . http_build_query( $_GET ) ) ); exit; } } } ?> 

NOTE: I recommend Soulseekah's approach, if you don't want it to remember the user's choice, you can incorporate my code with his code a bit. NOTE 2: If/when EAMann's patch is part of the core, obviously his method would be the best one as it wouldn't require you to go the long way round. I just don't like it at the moment as you have to edit the core files.