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By Peg Brickley Of DOW JONES DAILY BANKRUPTCY REVIEW The month of May added another $39.2 million to the professional fee bills rung up in U.S. bankruptcy court by collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ), bringing the total paid to lawyers and advisers working on the Chapter 11 case fee to nearly $805.3 million. Alvarez & Marsal, which is managing the wind-down process, remained the top money maker from Lehman's bankruptcy, with $18.6 million worth of charges in May. That brings the restructuring firm's total billings in the case to more than $296 million. Next comes Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Lehman's lead bankruptcy law firm, with $8.4 million in fee and expense billings during May for a case total of $190.7 million. Alvarez & Marsal and Weil Gotshal also paired up for another casualty of the near failure of the U.S. economy: the Chapter 11 case of Washington Mutual Inc. (WAMUQ), former parent of Washington Mutual Bank, or WaMu. The two former financial powerhouses, Lehman and Washington Mutual, failed just weeks apart in September 2008, when panic over the future of the U.S. banking system was running high. Spending in Washington Mutual's case, impressive by most standards, pales compared to the bills in Lehman, the largest bankruptcy case in U.S. history. As of the end of April, Alvarez & Marsal had billed only $36 million to Washington Mutual's case, which resulted from the largest bank failure in U.S. history. Weil Gotshal racked up a case total of only $18.9 million in Washington Mutual's bankruptcy as of the end of April, one-tenth of its bills in the Lehman case. Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, which represents Lehman's unsecured creditors, was paid $3.5 million in May, a figure that was included with the April reports. Its case total remains $52.8 million, according to a report filed Wednesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Jones Day, the law firm that's heading up Lehman's litigation against British bank Barclays PLC (BCS), ran up another $2.5 million worth of bills in May, bringing its case total to nearly $27 million. The litigation focuses on allegations Barclays profited unfairly from its purchase of Lehman's brokerage in the early days of the bankruptcy. It's an effort to reclaim billions of dollars worth of assets transferred to the U.K. bank. Lazard Freres & Co., investment banking adviser to Lehman, has collected less than $23 million from the start of the bankruptcy case through the end of May. Its arrangements with Lehman include potential fees for sales of company assets, fees for any financing Lazard might find for Lehman and a fee of as much as $17.5 million if "any stakeholders" receive money under a court-approved Chapter 11 plan, court documents say. (Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review covers news about distressed companies and those under bankruptcy protection.) -By Peg Brickley, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review; 302-521-2266; peg.brickley@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 24, 2010 14:36 ET (18:36 GMT)