With the final deal made, the city once again narrowly avoided a mass public defender strike that could have caused major disruption in the courts. The tentative agreement will now need to be voted on and ratified by union members before it can go into effect. In total, five public defender unions across four boroughs saw their labor contracts expire at the end of June. The BDS union was the largest of the five union shops, bringing over 500 union members to the picket line. The largest of those groups was the Legal Aid Society, the city’s largest public defender organization.