He was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he graduated with a first class degree in Mathematical Moderations and Finals.
He was briefly a lecturer in political economy to the Oxford University Extension and the Toynbee Trust before he became secretary to the National Association for the Promotion of Technical Education for four years.
He worked with Winston Churchill, then President of the Board of Trade, and William Beveridge in the organisation of labour exchanges and unemployment insurance.
[2] Smith invented judicial authorities to adjudicate benefit claims, which relieved Parliament of the burden: these were the Insurance Officers, Courts of Referees and the Umpire.
[5] In his obituary of Smith in the Economic Journal, Beveridge wrote: [He] was an outstanding public servant, in peace and in war... As a supremely constructive person, he was fortunate in reaching the most influential position in his career in 1907, just when a Government had come to power that wished to get new things done.
The country was fortunate in having him there when the first of our total wars required so many new things to be done which fell in or near the sphere of his department... For constructive inventiveness in making new ideas in public administration viable, Llewellyn Smith can never have been surpassed, and can have had few equals.