Dissident Yahoo Inc. shareholder Third Point LLC demanded that the company release records related to the hiring of Chief Executive Scott Thompson, adding to pressures on the company since his academic record was revealed last week as misstated.

Meanwhile, Yahoo's board is still reviewing the circumstances that led to a regulatory filing in late April that included the erroneous information.

The incident comes as the company tries to turn itself around under Mr. Thompson, who was hired in January.

Yahoo's filing in late April included a short bio of Mr. Thompson and said he had obtained a bachelor's degree in computer science and accounting. Yahoo, and Mr. Thompson's alma mater, Stonehill College, last week confirmed disclosures by Third Point that he only earned an accounting degree.

For years the error in Mr. Thompson's academic record had been included on the websites of other companies that Mr. Thompson was affiliated with, including his former employer eBay Inc.'s PayPal unit, where he was president until taking the Yahoo job. Yet prior regulatory filings by eBay and companies whose boards included Mr. Thompson correctly listed only his accounting degree.

On Sunday, Yahoo's board held a conference call to set in motion the process it would take to obtain more facts, including whether anyone at Yahoo had knowledge of the public discrepancies regarding Mr. Thompson's academic record and what they did with such information, said people familiar with the matter. The board is hiring an outside law firm to help oversee the matter, one of these people said.

Yahoo's board also has formed a three-person special committee to investigate the flawed academic credentials, said another person familiar with the matter, and the trio are all newcomers to the board.

The board is struggling with the question of how Mr. Thompson didn't notice the mistaken information in his publicly-available biography for so long, said the people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Thompson so far has been silent about the matter, though inside the company he has told some colleagues that he didn't notice the existence of the erroneous information about him until last week, when Third Point first pointed it out, according to people familiar with the matter.

Director Patti Hart, chief executive of casino game-maker International Game Technology Inc., who initiated Yahoo's search for a CEO last year and recommended Mr. Thompson, and outgoing Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock will both be under scrutiny for their roles in the hiring, according to people with knowledge of the board's review. Mr. Bostock 'has ultimate responsibility' for the new CEO's selection, one such person said.

Some board members didn't know that [Mr. Thompson] was being interviewed for CEO and learned his identity hours before they voted to hire him, said a person briefed on the matter.

The search committee kept its CEO hunt secret from other directors because it didn't want the news to leak, said people familiar with the matter.

Third Point, which owns around 6% of Yahoo shares and is waging a proxy battle to obtain board seats, sent a letter to the company on Monday that cites Delaware corporate law and asks Yahoo to make books and records related to Mr. Thompson's hiring available for inspection and copying.

Yahoo spokespeople didn't respond to a request for comment. The company last week said the regulatory filing was the result of an 'inadvertent error' but declined to elaborate further.