Lawyer's basic writing cleverer when spoken (10)

I haven't cracked this one yet — but the brilliant team at Fifteensquared have:

PROSE (basic writing, by contrast with verse, with the same sense as ‘prosaic’) + CUTOR (sounds like – when spoken – ‘cuter’, cleverer. Or possibly ‘acuter’ when the whole word is spoken, but then the E would be clued twice)