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So what did you think of my first interpretation?
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For comparison:
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Originally Posted by original
If a financial institution or any director, officer, employee, or agent of any financial institution, voluntarily or pursuant to this section or any other authority, reports a suspicious transaction to a government agency
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Originally Posted by yours
If a financial institute or anyone employed by a financial institute either voluntarily or accordingly to this law or any law of the same stature reports a suspicious transaction to a government agency then..."
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You asked, so I will reply. It might seem like semantic difference to you, but in systems of law, words are everything.
In this case, you've omitted the "agent" specified in the original, by your use of "employed by." Agents are "person(s) authorized to act for and under the direction of another person when dealing with third parties." This wouldn't necessarily fall into "employees of the institution", particularly because agents are explicitly
not employees of an institution when they are compensated by a third party. In your wording, an employee for another company which did consulting work with the financial institution would be able to disclose the investigation, whereas in the original wording they would
not be able to.
The biggest problem, though, is that you actually didn't make it any more clear, or any more terse. If I necessarily omit your use of "then..", both sentences are 33 words. I think yours is MORE confusing, because you'd now have to add entries to an appendix to define your usage of the word "stature" and "employed," if you wanted it really to mean the same thing.
The necessity for a site like this could easily be quashed by simply creating a site with legal definitions of words. In my opinion, legal documents are NOT complicated. They're English words arranged in very familiar and structured ways, and provide an exact and binding rule of law.When we "interpret" it by rewording it, we absolutely change the meaning and defeat the purpose of disseminating the meaning of our laws.