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I really want to do transactional but I hate NYC and love DC. What are the best firms/offices for transactional (M&A) in DC?

I'm interested in this as well. Is DC mostly litigation or is there a pretty big transactional practice? I know NYC transactional is mostly finance related, but what is DC transactional based on? M&A?

You'll be greatly disappointed in DC if you want to practice corporate. DC is largely litigation/regulatory but there are also other uniquely DC practice areas that most of the larger firms do. For example, the top DC firms have large practices in the area of Government Investigations. Every time you see a top CEO testifying in front of Congress, he was prepared by one of the top DC firms. Every time you hear Congress or an agency is investigating X company, then the DC firms are involved. Its not really litigation but its a practice that takes up a lot of the billables.

There really isn't much M&A type corporate work in DC. The only corporate work I've seen involves bankruptcy, securities, and transactional IP work.

The focus in DC is on litigation, but some DC firms do have significant corporate practices. Latham, for example, has a well-known corporate/M&A and capital markets practice in DC. A&P, Hogan and Covington would also be places to look at.

Honestly, most of this information is readily available online. Look at the websites of various DC firms and click on the "Practices" link. Then look at the bios of people working in those practice areas. Chambers and NALP also have information on corporate practices in DC.

Latham is the best corporate practice and one of its biggest clients is Carlyle. There is a fair amount of transactional work out of the DC offices of the large NYC firms. Skadden, Sutherland, Arent Fox, and Dechert do a fair amount of transactional work, pus the firms mentioned above. Tax practices are pretty strong in DC and support the transactions coming out of the NYC offices. Even regulatory practices support transactions to ensure compliance and the like. But pure, bigtime transactional work is a little harder to come by in DC.

That said, there are plenty of smaller transactions and local things happening in the DC, VA, MD area and a ton of transactional work to go around. You might not be doing DPW or SC type transactions with deals in the Wall Street Journal, but the transactions are here.