Counselor Licensure in Mississippi: LPC Requirements, Hours and Exams

Mississippi's two-tier ladder starts from a full provisional license, issued and renewed by the Board — not a registration or a permit.

Rule 4.2(G) renews the P-LPC annually and caps it at four years, with an appeal to the Board for an extension, so a licensee whose hours run long has a documented route to ask for more time.

What the P-LPC cannot do is practice alone: the rule bars independent practice and holding oneself out as an independent counselor, and the board's FAQ says you cannot engage in independent private practice as a P-LPC.

The LPC sits above it, and Rule 4.3(A) makes holding a Mississippi P-LPC the first requirement for licensure.

The practical consequence for a new graduate: your supervision contract and Declaration of Practice need to be in place before the P-LPC issues, because post-master's hours only begin once it does.

Rule 4.2(B) sets the floor at sixty (60) semester hours or ninety (90) quarter hours of graduate study, and for degrees conferred after January 1, 2017 the Board accepts only programs of that size.

The program must be either a CACREP degree program or a degree program with the word counseling in its title that meets CACREP's structure for the twelve specified courses; an earned doctoral or educational specialist degree primarily in counseling, guidance or a related field is an alternative that meets similar standards.

The rule's course list amounts to a three-semester-hour course in each of twelve areas, from human growth and development through an internship in a clinical setting.

If your master's came in under 60 hours, the board's FAQ offers two fixes: complete another 60-hour degree program or complete an advanced degree such as a doctorate or specialist.

Map your transcript to the twelve areas before you apply, because the application fee is nonrefundable.

The requirement is a total of three thousand (3,000) supervised hours in not less than eighteen (18) months of counseling in a clinical setting, post-master's.

Two pacing rules decide what a workweek is worth: a maximum of 40 supervised hours may be obtained per workweek, and a maximum of 25 hours of direct service per 40-hour workweek, so overtime cannot shorten the calendar.

At least 1,200 of the 3,000 must be in Direct Services — face-to-face or synchronous counseling with individuals, couples, families or groups, and testing and assessment.

The 100 supervision hours need at least two hours every month, group supervision counts for no more than 50 of them, and supervision of the same client hours by multiple supervisors at the same site is not accepted.

Post-master's hours begin once the P-LPC is issued, everything must fall within the seven (7) years before your application date, and an in-state applicant can accrue hours only in Mississippi.

The jurisprudence exam is a P-LPC entry requirement: Rule 4.2(D) tells individuals making initial application for provisional licensure to include in the application packet the certificate indicating a passing score on the Mississippi Jurisprudence Exam, and the national exam completes the pair at the LPC — the board's LPC page says a passing score report on the NCE or the NCMHCE, in addition to the jurisprudence score report, is required before the Board will review an application for LPC.

The national exam is your choice, may be taken at any time without Board approval, and can predate your application: if you passed it in a CACREP program or for another state, you order the score report rather than re-sit.

The state exam is open book, 35 multiple choice questions, a minimum of 80 percent to pass, 60 minutes, administered through CCE Academy, with a 30-day wait before you can purchase it again after a failure or a timeout.

The FAQ reaches back, too: a P-LPC issued before the January 1, 2023 revisions must still pass it before applying for LPC.

Every supervision hour that counts needs a Board qualified supervisor, the LPC-S.

An LPC-S is a Mississippi LPC with at least five years practicing mental health counseling, two of them post-licensing, who has completed a graduate supervision course of at least 45 clock hours, a Board-approved 45-clock-hour training, or NBCC's Approved Clinical Supervisor Credential; the Board approves each one, and an LPC-S adds a minimum of two hours of supervision continuing education per renewal period.

Two limits matter when you pick a site: an LPC-S may carry no more than ten (10) active supervisees, and a supervisor may not be a relative of the P-LPC.

Distance supervision is written into the rule rather than left to policy: sessions must be secure synchronous video only, telephone, email and chat are reserved for emergencies, and the LPC-S must be qualified to provide Distance Professional Services under Rule 7.5.

After you apply for the LPC, supervision continues at a minimum of one individual hour per month until the license is issued.

Distance Professional Services, Mississippi's term for telehealth counseling and supervision, carry their own credential gate.

An LPC or LPC-S offering them must hold the Board Certified-TeleMental Health (BC-TMH) credential from CCE or an equivalent, or complete at least nine (9) clock hours of training covering HIPAA compliance, ethical and legal issues, crisis planning, choosing and using technology, orienting clients, settings and care coordination, and appropriateness.

A P-LPC can practice telehealth only with the approval of an LPC-S who must be designated a Distance Professional Services provider, and must hold the designation too.

The definitions rule closes the asynchronous back door, stating that methods such as text messaging, email and chat rooms are not an acceptable practice of counseling in Mississippi.

The designation carries its own continuing education — two telemental health hours per LPC renewal, one per year for P-LPCs — and no licensing fee.

Title protection sits alongside: representing yourself by the title Licensed Professional Counselor or Provisional Licensed Professional Counselor without the license is a misdemeanor with a fine of $500 to $1,000 per offense.

The comity route asks more than a current license elsewhere.

The applicant must demonstrate an equivalent independent counseling practice license, at least five years of professional work as a counselor since initial licensure, licensure maintained continuously through those five years, and no substantiated complaints or disciplinary actions ever.

The rest of the file is heavyweight: a curriculum vitae with three work references, certified copies of your licensure file sent directly by your current state, a fingerprint-based criminal history check, and a certificate of completion of the Mississippi Jurisprudence Exam.

A counselor licensed elsewhere for less than five years, or with a gap in licensure or a discipline history, would instead qualify through the standard route, and Rule 4.3(D) lets the Board accept out-of-state supervision hours supervised by an LPC-S or equivalent.

Note the asymmetry for people who start here: an in-state applicant may accrue supervised hours only in Mississippi.

Mississippi's rules adopt the Professional Counseling Compact by pointing to it: Rule 4.12 says the section is governed under the Compact's provisions found at Mississippi Code Annotated Section 73-30-51.

When Mississippi enacted it is a different question — the enactment date was not located in the sources read, and the statute text itself was not read; the rule cite is what the record carries.

As of September 2026 the Counseling Compact Commission lists Mississippi among its member states but not among the nine states issuing and accepting privileges, and its fees table shows Mississippi requiring a jurisprudence exam.

Until the commission lists Mississippi as live, an LPC here cannot use the Compact to practice elsewhere and a counselor licensed elsewhere cannot use it to practice here; the route in remains a Mississippi license, by examination or by comity.

The two rungs renew on different clocks.

LPCs renew every two years, July 1 to June 30, with twenty-four (24) Continuing Education Hours including 6 in ethics or legal issues in counseling; P-LPCs renew annually on the same window with 6 CEH including 2 ethics hours, per the board's P-LPC page.

Surplus hours do not bank: CEH accrued beyond the required number may not be applied toward the next renewal period.

Distance Professional Services providers owe extra — two telemental health hours per LPC renewal, one per year for P-LPCs — and LPC-Ss add supervision hours of their own.

Background screening rides on renewal as well: Rule 6.1 requires every LPC seeking renewal to undergo a fingerprint-based criminal history records check of the Mississippi central criminal database and the FBI database, on a six-year cycle.

The rules themselves are recent.

The Board revised its Rules and Regulations effective January 1, 2023 — its FAQ still references P-LPCs issued before the Rules and Regulations January 1, 2023, revisions — and the current compilation carries an effective date of March 2, 2026, with a board notice recording a final rules submission on 01-29-2026.

The 2023 line matters in practice because of who it reaches back to: per the FAQ, a P-LPC issued before the January 1, 2023 revisions must still take and pass the Mississippi Pass/Fail Jurisprudence Examination before applying for LPC.

The board also posts a document dated 9.15.2026 whose content was not reviewed for this page, so check the board's site for anything newer than the March compilation.