4.3 Renewal, Continuing Education, Fees, Lapsed Status & Fingerprints

Why renewal administration is a scoring topic

Hours, fees, and calendars look like office trivia until a P-LPC loses supervised-hour credit or an LPC is moved to Lapsed Status for missing June 30. Rule 6.1 is written as two parallel systems. Mixing them is the most common study error. P-LPC is annual, 6 CEH, $50, four-year cap. LPC is biennial, 24 CEH, $220 subject to the renewal notice, fingerprints every six years, and a jurisprudence completion certificate if applicable. Widely repeated third-party summaries that say Mississippi requires 30 continuing education hours per renewal period are wrong under Current.pdf, Effective 09/16/2025. Do not memorize 30. Memorize 24 including 6 for LPC and 6 including 2 for P-LPC.

A second high-yield split is jurisprudence itself. Applicants for licensure take the Pass/Fail Mississippi JP Examination: 35 items, 60 minutes, open book, 80% to pass, 30-day wait to retake, delivered as the Board’s applicant exam (with CCE involved in scoring/administration as the Board directs). Already-licensed LPC and LPC-S renewal uses a different CCE Academy jurisprudence product described as a no-fail instrument (30 items for LPC / 35 for LPC-S on the renewal side) for renewals only. Rule 6.1.B.2.d asks LPCs to submit a certificate of completion of the Mississippi Jurisprudence Exam if applicable. That phrase is the renewal-document hook. It is not permission to treat the applicant Pass/Fail exam and the renewal product as one test. If a question is about getting licensed, teach Pass/Fail 80%. If a question is about an already-licensed LPC renewing and the Board’s renewal checklist, teach the completion certificate when the Board says it applies, without converting renewal into another 80% barrier unless the live Board instructions for that renewal cycle say so. Confirm the current Board PDF and renewal notice; this guide teaches the 09/16/2025 rule text.

Failure to receive a courtesy email is not an excuse for either credential. Rules 6.1.A.8–9 and 6.1.B.5–6 say P-LPCs and LPCs are notified of renewal by email as a courtesy, and failure to receive a renewal notice will not relieve the licensee from the renewal requirement.

Rule 6.1.A — P-LPC annual renewal

1. All P-LPCs renew annually on or before June 30.
2. Submit a completed renewal application.
3. Pay the nonrefundable Annual Renewal Fee of $50.00 by check, money order, or the online process, payable to the Mississippi Board of Examiners for Licensed Professional Counselors.
4. The P-LPC shall be renewable for not more than four (4) years. P-LPCs may appeal to the Board for an extension.
5. Upon yearly renewal, the LPC-S shall submit the online evaluation of the P-LPC.
6. Submit the log of Continuing Education Hours. Each P-LPC must accrue six (6) CEH during the preceding license period, two (2) of which must involve topics in professional ethics or legal issues in the delivery of counseling services.
7. P-LPCs with the Distance Professional Services designation must submit a minimum of one (1) hour of CE specific to Distance Professional Services per year (inside the 6, per Rule 7.5.4). 8–9. Courtesy email; missed email is not an excuse.
8. Miss the deadline and the license status is immediately changed to Lapsed Status.
9. A P-LPC with Lapsed Status who wants to return to current status must pay a Reapplication Fee in addition to the Annual Renewal Fee within sixty (60) calendar days. Otherwise the person is no longer licensed and must reapply under the current Rules and Regulations.
10. A P-LPC with Lapsed Status will not be allowed to accrue supervised experience hours.

Item 12 is career-critical. A lapsed P-LPC who keeps seeing clients “while the check is in the mail” is not licensed to practice, and those hours do not count toward the 3,000-hour path. Rule 2.3.A adds that restoring a lapsed license also requires submitting the continuing education requirements, paying the mandatory Reapplication Fee and the current-year Renewal Fee, and submitting additional Board-requested items as necessary, all within sixty calendar days from Lapsed Status. A check returned for nonsufficient funds, or a refused credit card or e-check, is treated as a lapsed renewal under Rule 2.3.C.

The P-LPC CE year and the P-LPC license year run July 1 to June 30 every year (Rule 6.2.A.3).

Rule 6.1.B — LPC biennial renewal, LPC-S CE, fingerprints

All LPCs renew biennially on or before June 30 of the renewal year. The following must be received in the Board Office on or before that June 30:

• a completed renewal form;
• the prescribed License Renewal Fee;
• certificates documenting twenty-four (24) CEH, which include 6 hours of ethics or legal issues in counseling;
• certificate of completion of the Mississippi Jurisprudence Exam if applicable;
• every LPC seeking renewal must undergo a fingerprint-based criminal history records check of the Mississippi central criminal database and the Federal Bureau of Investigation criminal history database every six (6) years, submitting a full set of fingerprints in a form and manner prescribed by the Board.

Board qualified supervisors (LPC-S) must submit a minimum of one (1) hour of continuing education specific to supervision per year (a minimum of two (2) hours per renewal period). LPCs who have the Distance Professional Services designation must submit a minimum of two (2) hours of CE specific to Distance Professional Services per renewal. Those DPS hours sit inside the 24, not in addition to 24.

Miss the LPC deadline and status changes immediately to Lapsed Status; those LPCs are not licensed to provide counseling. An LPC with Lapsed Status who wants to return to practicing status must pay a reapplication fee in addition to the current year’s renewal fee within sixty (60) calendar days. Otherwise the person is no longer licensed and must reapply under current rules.

LPC CE periods run July 1 to June 30 every two years (Rule 6.2.A.3). Fingerprints are not an annual ritual; they are a six-year cycle. Skipping a fingerprint year that falls in your renewal window is still a missing 6.1.B.2.e item.

Non-practicing status (Rule 5.4.B / 1.4.X) is a different off-ramp: yearly renewal, $50 annual non-practicing fee, no CEH required to stay non-practicing, but no practice, no supervision, no DPS, and no billing. Return to practicing status requires paying the full licensing fee, completing the Mississippi Jurisprudence Exam within the past 365 calendar days, showing 12 CEH within the prior 365 days, and completing a background check if the Board requests one. Retired status is permanent unless the person files a new application and meets current qualifications.

Rule 6.2 CE mechanics and Rule 2.1 fees

One CEH equals one contact (clock) hour, which equals fifty (50) to sixty (60) minutes in a continuing education activity. Accrual begins after the date the license was issued or renewed. CEH beyond the required number may not be applied toward the next renewal period. Do not bank surplus ethics hours.

At renewal the Board conducts a mandatory audit of 10 percent of licensees, randomly chosen. Audited licensees may be asked to submit additional documentation within thirty (30) calendar days of receipt of the audit notice. Each licensee keeps a personal record of attendance and completion and retains that documentation for two years from the end of the license renewal year. Do not mail CEH to the Board unless requested; the portal may be used to upload documentation as hours accrue. If an audited licensee fails to comply with CEH requirements, the licensee has three (3) months to comply. Failure to comply within those three months results in Suspension Status.

Credit is not allowed for regular work activities, administrative staff meetings, case staffing/reporting, agency policy-and-procedure training, or non-counseling content courses. Pre-approved providers named in Rule 6.2 include ACA, AMHCA, MCA, MLPCA with MCA approval, AAMFT, and NBCC, among entities that meet similar or higher standards. Naming those associations describes the Board’s pre-approval list; it is not a claim that this OpenExamPrep chapter is an official product of those associations.

Rule 2.2.A: all fees are nonrefundable. Rule 2.1 amounts in the 09/16/2025 compilation:

The biennial LPC renewal figure is expressly subject to change in the renewal notice. If a notice lists a different amount, the notice controls for that cycle; the compilation still teaches $220 as the scheduled figure. There is still no DPS designation fee under Rule 7.5.5.

Jurisprudence scenario: the June 30 email that never arrived

Priya is a P-LPC in month 20 of supervised practice. She completed 6 CEH, including 2 ethics hours and 1 TMH hour that sits inside the 6 because she holds the DPS designation. She intended to pay the $50 annual renewal on June 28 but waited for the Board’s courtesy email. The email went to an old address she never updated. On July 1 her status is Lapsed. She keeps seeing clients that week because “I already did the CE.”

Rule 6.1.A.9: failure to receive a renewal notice does not relieve the licensee. Rule 6.1.A.10: status changes immediately to Lapsed Status. Rule 6.1.A.12: a lapsed P-LPC may not accrue supervised experience hours. The July sessions are not countable hours, and she is not licensed to practice during the lapse. She has 60 calendar days to pay the Reapplication Fee ($100 under Rule 2.1.L) plus the $50 Annual Renewal Fee, and Rule 2.3 still expects CE documentation and any other Board-requested items. Miss that window and she must reapply under current rules. She may also owe the $50 failure-to-notify-of-address-change fee (Rule 2.1.M) as a separate Rule 2.1 item if the Board assesses it for the unreported move.

Now place an LPC beside her. Malik is in a biennial LPC renewal year. He has 24 CEH including 6 ethics, paid the $220 fee listed in the notice, uploaded DPS’s 2 TMH hours inside the 24, and submitted supervision CE of 2 hours for the renewal period because he is LPC-S. He still needs the jurisprudence completion certificate if applicable for that LPC renewal, and if this is a fingerprint year in his six-year cycle he must submit Mississippi and FBI fingerprint-based checks. Malik should not register for the applicant Pass/Fail 35-item 80% exam thinking it is the same product as the renewal instrument. If his Board renewal checklist requires the no-fail renewal jurisprudence completion certificate, that is the “if applicable” document. If he were still an applicant, he would need the Pass/Fail exam instead.

Exam traps for this section

• Studying 30 CE hours from a third-party summary, directory listing, or blog.
• Allowing a lapsed P-LPC to keep banking 3,000-hour credit.
• Treating surplus CEH as roll-forward credit.
• Collapsing applicant Pass/Fail JP (80%, 35 items) into the renewal no-fail product.
• Forgetting LPC-S supervision CE (1 hour per year / 2 per biennial renewal) or LPC fingerprinting every 6 years.
• Inventing a DPS designation fee, or assuming LPC biennial $220 can never change even though Rule 2.1.E says the notice can change it.