Louisiana Continuing Education Requirements for Mental Health Professionals

Louisiana is a genuinely useful case study in why “check your state’s CE requirements” isn’t a one-size-fits-all task, even within the same state. Social workers here renew every single year with a 20-hour requirement, while counselors, marriage and family therapists, and psychologists all renew every two years with 40 hours instead. Hold more than one of these licenses, and you’re not just tracking different hour totals — you’re tracking entirely different rhythms.

The biggest recent news for Louisiana clinicians involves interstate practice, and it cuts in opposite directions depending on your profession. Louisiana counselors just gained real, usable Counseling Compact access — Louisiana became the fourth state in the country to actually start issuing privileges. Louisiana psychologists, on the other hand, just had PSYPACT enacted on paper, but won’t be able to use it until 2028.

This guide explains the current Louisiana continuing education requirements for LPCs, LCSWs, LMFTs, and psychologists, including required CE hours, ethics requirements, renewal deadlines, approved providers, and other Louisiana-specific rules to help you stay compliant.

Louisiana Continuing Education Requirements

Louisiana is a useful reminder that renewal cycle length varies by profession within the same state — social workers renew annually here while counselors, marriage and family therapists, and psychologists renew every two years (Louisiana Licensed Professional Counselors Board of Examiners, n.d.; Louisiana State Board of Social Work Examiners, n.d.; Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists, n.d.).

License Type	CE Requirements	Renewal / Special Requirements	Official Licensing Board
Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC)	40 CE hours every 2 years	Minimum 3 hours ethics, 6 hours in diagnosis/assessment/treatment under the DSM. Up to 20 hours may be completed online. Board-approved supervisors need 3 additional hours in supervision each cycle.	Louisiana Licensed Professional Counselors Board of Examiners
Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)	20 CE hours every year	Annual renewal, unlike the other three professions in this state. Minimum 10 hours must be clinical content (diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders). 3 hours ethics required every other year.	Louisiana State Board of Social Work Examiners
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT)	40 CE hours every 2 years	Same board and content structure as LPC: 3 hours ethics specific to MFT, 6 hours diagnosis/assessment/treatment, up to 20 hours online. Board-approved supervisors need 6 hours in supervision every 4 years.	Louisiana Licensed Professional Counselors Board of Examiners
Licensed Psychologist (PhD / PsyD)	40 hours of Continuing Professional Development every 2 years	Biennial reporting period runs July 1 to June 30. Minimum 2 hours ethics, 2 hours cultural competency. No longer requires reporting across multiple separate categories as of recent rule changes.	Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists

Clinical Note: Louisiana’s mixed renewal cycles are the thing to watch here — if you’re a dual-licensed clinician (say, an LCSW who is also an LMFT), you’re managing genuinely different rhythms: one license renewing every year with 20 hours, another every two years with 40. Don’t let the annual social work cycle create a false sense that you’re “ahead” on your other license’s requirements.

Louisiana License Renewal Requirements

Fees, formats, and cycle lengths genuinely differ across Louisiana’s three boards.

LPC License Renewal

Administered by the Louisiana Licensed Professional Counselors Board of Examiners. Renewal is due by June 30 every other year — specifically, an LPC first licensed in an odd-numbered year renews by June 30 of the next odd-numbered year, and one licensed in an even-numbered year renews by June 30 of the next even-numbered year. The standard renewal fee is $170, per the Board’s own published fee schedule. If you miss the June 30 deadline, your license lapses and a $60 late renewal fee applies, along with a required fingerprint criminal records check. The Board audits roughly 10% of renewals each cycle, and CE approved by the Louisiana Counseling Association, American Counseling Association, or NBCC is automatically accepted without additional review. Up to 20 of the 40 required hours may be completed online.

LCSW License Renewal

Administered by the separate Louisiana State Board of Social Work Examiners. Renewal is due annually by August 31. Fees are tiered by license level, per the Board’s own renewal instructions: $50 for RSW, $100 for CSW and LMSW, and $150 for LCSW and LCSW-BACS, plus a $3 electronic commerce fee for online renewal. Licenses not renewed by August 31 lapse, though a lapsed license can still be renewed between September 1 and the following February 28 with an added fee; after February 28, reinstatement is required instead of simple renewal. Beyond the 10-hour clinical-content minimum, note that Louisiana’s rules treat live synchronous webinars as distance learning rather than in-person credit for CE-cap purposes in some board guidance, even though a 2026 NASW-Louisiana update states synchronous CE is now counted the same as an in-person event — given that inconsistency between sources, confirm current treatment of synchronous CE directly with the Board before assuming it satisfies any specific in-person requirement.

LMFT License Renewal

Administered by the same Louisiana Licensed Professional Counselors Board of Examiners as LPC, on the identical June 30 biennial deadline structure, the same $170 renewal fee, and the same 20-hour online cap. LMFT-Supervisors renewing their Privileging Designation pay an additional $50 fee.

Psychologist License Renewal

Administered by the separate Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists. Unlike the other three Louisiana licenses in this guide, psychologist renewal is annual, not biennial — the CE reporting period runs July 1 to June 30, but the license itself must be renewed with the Board every single year. Based on the Board’s own fee reduction language for retired licensees (who pay “one-half of the amount of the current licensure renewal fee,” currently $100), the standard annual renewal fee is approximately $200; confirm the exact current figure directly with LSBEP. Renewal opens July 1 each year, and a license not renewed is considered lapsed shortly after the deadline.

Louisiana Approved CE Providers

Whether you’re looking for Louisiana online continuing education or in-person Louisiana continuing education courses, Louisiana recognizes CE from national accreditors alongside long-standing state associations:

Accreditor / Association	Who It’s For	Recognized For
National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC)	LPCs	Widely accepted for LPC renewal
Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) / NASW	LCSWs	Accepted for LCSW renewal, subject to Louisiana’s in-person/synchronous hour requirement
APA-approved sponsors	Licensed Psychologists	The standard for psychologist CE in Louisiana
Louisiana Counseling Association (LCA)	LPCs, LMFTs	Represents counselors across settings, including LPCs and LMFTs, with a dedicated CE program
Louisiana Psychological Association (LPA)	Licensed Psychologists	Serving Louisiana psychology since 1948, with membership dues directly supporting advocacy and continuing education
NASW Louisiana Chapter	LCSWs	One of the largest annual social work conferences in the country, plus a 2026 Professional Development Series running January through August with both in-person and virtual formats

For a broader look at how CE approval works across all license types and states, see our full guide to continuing education for mental health professionals.

Louisiana-Specific Considerations

A few details worth knowing beyond the base CE requirements:

Louisiana Just Went Live in the Counseling Compact

Louisiana became the fourth state in the country to actually begin issuing Counseling Compact privileges, on April 20, 2026 — following Arizona and Minnesota (September 30, 2025) and Ohio (January 5, 2026). Louisiana LPCs can now apply through CompactConnect for privileges in other live states, and eligible counselors from those states can apply for a Louisiana privilege. The current total privilege fee is $160 ($130 Louisiana state fee plus the Commission’s $30 administrative fee), and Louisiana does not currently require a jurisprudence exam as part of that application — a notably lighter process than some other live states.

Louisiana Psychologists Won’t Have PSYPACT Access Until 2028

This is genuinely important and easy to miss: Louisiana enacted PSYPACT via House Bill 486 (Act 302) during the 2026 legislative session, but the law doesn’t take effect until January 1, 2028. Until then, psychologists licensed in other PSYPACT states cannot practice in Louisiana under PSYPACT authority, and Louisiana-licensed psychologists cannot use PSYPACT to practice elsewhere. If you’re a Louisiana psychologist assuming PSYPACT access is already available because the legislation passed, that assumption is currently incorrect — the Board’s own site explicitly warns against relying on it before the effective date.

Louisiana’s Social Work Format Rules Aren’t Fully Consistent Across Sources

Some Louisiana CE resources describe live synchronous webinars as counting toward a distance-learning cap for LCSWs, while a 2026 update from NASW Louisiana states synchronous CE is now treated the same as an in-person event. Since these two characterizations conflict, don’t rely on a single third-party source (including this one) for exactly how a specific webinar format will be treated — confirm directly with the Louisiana State Board of Social Work Examiners before assuming a given course satisfies any in-person-specific portion of your renewal.

New Licensee vs. Renewing Licensee

A few distinctions worth knowing depending on where you are in your Louisiana licensure timeline:

• LPC-Supervisors need 3 additional hours in supervision each cycle, on top of the standard 40-hour requirement — a real addition rather than hours drawn from the existing total.
• LMFT-Supervisors face a different supervision-hour schedule than LPC-Supervisors: 6 hours every 4 years rather than 3 hours every cycle, so don’t assume the two supervisory tracks mirror each other even though they share the same board.
• Supervisors more broadly take on real added responsibility in Louisiana, and having a clear clinical supervision agreement in place from the outset helps define expectations for both parties throughout the supervisory relationship.

CE Tracker Templates for Mental Health Professionals

Even with a clear picture of your state’s requirements, actually staying on top of continuing education across a full renewal cycle is a different challenge — tracking which hours you’ve completed, which mandated categories still need attention, where you’ve saved your certificates, and when your actual deadline hits. A CE tracker template solves this by giving you one place to log activities as you complete them, monitor progress against your specific requirements, and pull everything together when it’s time to submit your renewal — rather than reconstructing two years of CE history in a panic the week before your license expires.

Get started with the free CE Tracker Template to organize your current renewal cycle, or manage your complete CE renewal process from planning through submission with this comprehensive CE Tracker Template (pictured above).

Final Thoughts on Louisiana CE Requirements

Louisiana’s mixed renewal cycles are the single biggest source of potential confusion here, especially for anyone holding more than one of these licenses. Beyond that, the state’s compact landscape is worth watching closely and treating with real precision: Louisiana counselors have genuine, usable interstate access today, while Louisiana psychologists are still roughly a year and a half away from PSYPACT actually applying to them, despite the law already being on the books.

That gap between “enacted” and “effective” is exactly the kind of detail that’s easy to get wrong from a quick search, and exactly why it’s worth confirming directly with your specific board before making a practice decision that depends on it.

References

• Louisiana Licensed Professional Counselors Board of Examiners. (n.d.). Home. Resource
• Louisiana State Board of Social Work Examiners. (n.d.). Home. Resource
• Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists. (n.d.). Home. Resource
• Counseling Accreditation. (2026). Louisiana Counseling Compact: What LPCs need to know in 2026. Resource
• NASW Louisiana Chapter. (n.d.). Continuing education. Resource
• Louisiana Counseling Association. (n.d.). Who we are. Resource
• Louisiana Psychological Association. (n.d.). About. Resource
• Louisiana Licensed Professional Counselors Board of Examiners. (n.d.). LPC renewal information. Resource
• Louisiana State Board of Social Work Examiners. (n.d.). Renewal information. Resource