Once every 24 months for the version you choose; as often as ordered for the versions you don't.
Virginia's voluntary clinic, the one drivers take on their own initiative for safe driving points, runs on a two-year clock. Complete it, bank up to 5 safe driving points, and the voluntary option sleeps until 24 months pass. Two design features shape how to use it. First, Virginia caps your safe-point balance at +5, so a driver already at +5 gains nothing from a clinic; the two-year rhythm only pays if violations have eaten into your balance. Second, remember the choose-one rule from enrollment: each voluntary attendance buys safe driving points or an insurance discount, never both, so the 24-month interval is really rationing one benefit of your choosing at a time.
The involuntary lanes ignore that clock completely. If a court orders or accepts a clinic as part of resolving a ticket, that's per case, whenever cases arise. If the DMV orders you in after hitting 12 demerit points in 12 months or 18 in 24, the clinic isn't optional, isn't waiting on any interval, and comes with a 90-day deadline against suspension. Neither ordered attendance consumes your voluntary two-year slot, though the court decides what benefits, if any, attach to its version.
The steady-state pattern for a Virginia driver who collects the occasional ticket: let the clinic restore your balance every couple of years, and treat the $100 legal fee cap, detailed on our cost page, as the ceiling on what that maintenance ever costs.
Every DMV-approved online clinic we track is compared on the Virginia page, and the four enrollment doors are decoded on our points page.