Weil Gotshal & Manges and Hogan Lovells are among a line-up of firms to have advised on Lehman Brothers Holdings' $6.5bn (£4.1bn) cash and equity sale of property group Archstone Enterprise.

Archstone, Lehman's single largest asset, is set to be sold to real estate investment trusts Equity Residential (EQR) and AvalonBay (AVB). EQR will acquire 60% and AVB the remaining 40% stake.

Both companies will pay $2.7bn (£1.7bn) cash and $3.8bn (£2.4bn) stock as well as assuming Archstone's $9.5bn (£5.9bn) debt. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2013.

Weil, Lehman's lead counsel, fielded a New York team comprising real estate partners David Herman and Michael Bond, M&A partner Raymond Gietz, tax partner Scott Sontag and employment partner Michael Kam.

The deal comes after Lehman bought the remaining 53.6% interest it did not already own in Archstone earlier this year, with Lehman subsequently filing for an initial public offering for the company in August.

Herman said: "The deal was extremely unusual and complex in that Lehman was simultaneously in the process of taking Archstone public – it was a case of dual tracking that made the deal logistically very complicated. But we had a great team working to make the transaction as smooth as possible."

Hogan Lovells acted for EQR with a team led out of Washington DC by corporate partners Bruce Gilchrist and Olesya Barsukova-Bakar, firm co-CEO and corporate partner Warren Gorrell, global tax head Cristina Arumi, tax partner Prentiss Feagles, real estate securitisation partner Lee Berner, antitrust partner Michele Harrington (Northern Virginia) and restructuring and insolvency partner Ira Greene (New York).

EQR also instructed Morrison & Foerster Washington DC corporate partner David Slotkin, while fellow US firm Goodwin Procter represented AvalonBay on the deal with a team led by Boston M&A partner John Haggerty.

Lehman purchased Archstone and its portfolio in a leveraged buyout in 2007, with Weil advising on the $22.2bn (£13.8bn) acquisition alongside a raft of firms including DLA Piper, Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz and legacy Hogan & Hartson. The deal marked the largest public-to-private takeover in the real estate investment trust sector at the time.

Lehman's subsequent collapse in 2008 has generated huge advisory fees for the law firms appointed to handle the fallout. This July, Weil's fees and expenses representing Lehman over the past three years reached $442m (£276m).

The role for Weil also comes after the firm's London office last year took a key role on the administration of broker MF Global's UK arm – the first company to enter Britain's post-Lehman administration regime set up to protect market stability.