What was going on when I was born?

At Donovan Leisure Newton & Irvine, a maid carries a tray of iced tea and cookies around to all the firm's lawyers every afternoon. It's a bit of elegance from the past that the 50-year-old Rockefeller Center firm still clings to. That kind of respect for tradition may, however, be part of the firm's problem. For Donovan Leisure has protected its tradition of mid-afternoon refreshments better than it has protected its practice of law. The large antitrust cases that formed the core of its work for decades have dried up and the firm has found nothing to take their place. Donovan Leisure is not alone. Many major law firms today are under financial pressure. Deregulation in Washington, the long-lived recession and the resulting cost-consciousness of corporate clients have all contributed to their woes. For these firms, a new era has dawned, one in which the practice of law has ceased to be a gentlemanly profession and instead has become an extremely competitive business.

ROSLYN HEIGHTS ARE conversions of rental apartment buildings to cooperatives on the Island beginning to approach the dimensions of the phenomenon in New York City? If so, what are the implications for the availability of housing in Nassau and Suffolk Counties? Lee E. Koppelman, director of the Long Island Regional Planning Board, said there was good news and bad news about co-op conversions. For building owners, he said, conversion is ''an attempt to recapitalize and make a profit.'' Another plus is that owning apartments gives people a greater interest in the property and has a stabilizing influence on their communities. ''But,'' Mr. Koppelman asked, ''what happens to the people who can't afford to buy? To the extent that you take housing off the market, you exacerbate the existing shortage of rental units on Long Island.''

Interest is growing within the Italian and West German Governments in an ''interim solution'' on the deployment of new NATO medium-range nuclear missiles at the end of the year. In practical terms, this means there is increased receptiveness in these countries for the idea that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization can reduce the number of American missiles it plans to station if the Soviet Union is willing to reduce its total of SS-20 missiles targeted on Western Europe. Semantically, at least, this does not signify abandoning NATO's current position - offering cancellation of its plans to install 572 Pershing 2 and cruise missiles if the Soviet Union scraps all its SS-20's - because hope is still expressed that both sides could reduce their totals to zero in continued negotiations over the next four or five years. Substantive Change Seen But according to Government officials in Rome and Bonn, the thinking does represent a substantive change in that it suggests that the United States would have to move away from its bargaining situation in which the Soviet Union would be required to junk all its SS-20's to reach any kind of early agreement on limitation of the medium-range weapons.

Long Island is preparing to enter the nuclear age, ending its near-total dependence on imported oil, with the completion of a reactor to provide a third of its electricity. But the plant is 10 years late and 10 times over budget, the most expensive reactor ever built, and its cost will probably make the area's bills the highest in the nation. The price of the reactor will be $3.1 billion if commercial operation begins by September, according to the Long Island Lighting Company, but more delays seem likely. If the cost is passed along to the utility's consumers, as expected, the result will be rate increases estimated by Lilco at 38 percent, more if the plant is frequently shut for maintenance. So far, customers' bills have reflected only a small amount of the reactor's cost. The rest of the money has come from Lilco's retained earnings and from money borrowed by the sale of bonds.

DURING the years that William K. Ketchum commuted an hour and a halff rom his home in Berkeley Heights, N. J., to American Telephone and T elegraph's Long Lines Division headquarters at 32 Avenue of the A mericas in Manhattan, he left his house at 7 in the morning and did n ot return until around 6 at night. Now that Long Lines has moved to the Somerset County countryside, next to Interstate Highway 287 and just 20 minutes from his home, Mr. Ketchum still leaves Berkeley Heights at 7 A.M. and does not see his family again until dinnertime after 6 P.M. Mr. Ketchum, a personnel director, spends that extra time - a gain of nearly two and one-half hours a day - at work, in his carpeted office with smoked-gray windows looking out over a parking deck, wide expanses of lawn and an endless stretch of hardwood trees that in winter forms a gray suburban skyline. That kind of rural view has replaced the spires of New York for thousands of employees who have been transferred from the city to the 34 million square feet of new office buildings that have been built into the Morris and Somerset County hills since the early 1970's.

ALBANY MORE money for education was the battle cry of state legislators as they returned to Albany at the start of the new legislative session. But many spoke gloomily about the state's budget deficit and warned of suffering ahead. ''Education is a priority,'' said Gordon W. Burrows, Democrat of Scarsdale. ''But the money situation this year is very questionable. If we are able to hold the line, it will be a major victory.''

With Joe Theismann and Alvin Garrett again combining on key pass plays and John Riggins again playing one-man ball control, the Washington Redskins marched methodically into the National Conference championship game today. The Redskins, the N.F.C.'s best team during the regular season, defeated the Minnesota Vikings, 21-7, at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in the second round of the National Football League playoffs and now await the outcome of the Green Bay-Dallas game Sunday. They will play the winner of that game here next Saturday for the N.F.C.'s spot in Super Bowl XVII Jan. 30. ''I think everybody's hoping for Dallas,'' said Vernon Dean, the rugged cornerback whose aggressive play epitomized the job the Washington defense did on the Vikings, limiting them to a secondquarter touchdown. ''I would like to play Dallas. They're the only team that beat us.''

Israel and Lebanon last week agreed on an agenda for peace negotiations after Israel decided that ''normalization'' by some other name could work as well. The major issues were still on the table, however.

In a frenetic, gritty contest, the Jets toppled the Los Angeles Raiders by 17-14 today to propel themselves into the American Football Conference championship game. It was a rough game between two teams that have always played roughly against each other. But one of the quietest players for the Jets, the linebacker Lance Mehl, preserved the victory with 98 seconds left by making his second interception of a pass from Jim Plunkett in the final three minutes. For the second consecutive playoff game, the Jets won as the underdog. Last week, they defeated the defending conference champions, the Cincinnati Bengals. The Jets will face the winner of Sunday's game at Miami between the San Diego Chargers and the Dolphins next Sunday at the victors' field. The winner of that game will play in Super Bowl XVII on Jan. 30.

The White House imposed quiet, if not order, on the Administration's green eyeshade brigade last week. In the wake of a directive limiting low-level contacts with reporters, Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan had a near monopoly on the spotlight when it came to talking about Topic A, the budget. Responding to concerns about projections that put the deficit at nearly $300 billion by 1988, he said that the Administration wouldn't push for any new taxes in 1983 and 1984, but that 1985 was another matter. Accordingly, it appeared that the Administration's proposed budget for fiscal 1984 - due to be formally unveiled Jan. 31 - would include ''contingency'' tax increases that would take effect in October 1985 if Federal deficits were not declining sharply by then. The contingencies might include an income tax surcharge or new levies on imported oil or maybe a windfall profits tax tied to decontrol of natural gas. According to Administration tabulations, the standby package would raise some $100 billion over three years. But there are many who believe 1985 is too long to wait. The Committee to Fight Inflation, a dozen former top Government officials, last week joined the legion of politicans and economists that says taxes must go up soon to head off debilitating deficits that will keep interest rates high and stall economic recovery.

TRENTON GOVERNOR KEAN'S first State of the State address last week and the reaction of the Democratic legislative leaders were noteworthy for what was not said. Mr. Kean made no bold new proposals, and the lawmakers refrained from criticizing the firstd-year performance of the Republican Governor. The Governor appealed for an end to the partisanship that slowed progress on a number of fronts last year, but without scolding or dwelling on the theme. The lawmakers, for their part, called the speech ''conciliatory.'' Mr. Kean and the Democratic majority leaders - the Senate President, Carmen A. Orechio of Nutley, and the Assembly Speaker, Alan J. Karcher of Sayreville - went to the mat late last year over the question of new taxes to balance the fiscal-year budget that ends June 30 and minimize anticipated problems in the coming year.

FREEPORT THERE are two men on the Island's South Shore who are known as Vinnie Fiore. Both of them have been in the shellfish business for 37 years - the kind of family-run partnership that is less common now than when they were younger men. One of the two Vinnies - the one whose birth certificate says his first name is really Fiorentino - can usually be found in their wholesale store in Freeport, selling clams bought from baymen by his brother, the other Vinnie Fiore, the one whose real name is Vincent. In their years in the shellfish business, the Fiores have endured scare after scare about contaminated clams. But few such crises have troubled them as much as the one that began at Christmastime and that has since been described by state officials as the worst shellfish contamination problem in recent memory.